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Leila Khaled with Fight Back! editor Mick Kelly

This is a quick little audio interview with Leila Khaled, a leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The interview was conducted by Mick Kelly, editor of Fight Back!

(Fight Back! is the newspaper of one of the two Freedom Road Socialist Organizations that emerged from the FRSO split in 1999.)

This audio interview and the associated article in Fighting Back! can be viewed here.

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[Red Army Faction] German Autumn, Bitter Defeat

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The third in a series of installments about the Red Army Faction, specifically their 1977 campaign which ended so tragically thirty years ago...

German Autumn, Bitter Defeat

As we saw in our previous installments, by late summer 1977 the Red Army Faction was poised to carry out its most ambitious gambit to free its members being held captive in West German prisons. Dozens of guerillas had spent years in isolation, at times subjected to sensory deprivation torture, and yet they continued to fight for their political identity, and indeed their own sanity, through hunger strikes which mobilized support on the outside.

During the previous three years, three members of the guerilla – Ulrike Meinhof, Siegfried Hausner and Holger Meins – had died while in captivity. The radical left considered each of these deaths to be a case of murder.

As the month of August came to an end the guerilla had already carried out several attacks in 1977, killing members of the ruling class, their bodyguards and police. One of these, Jürgen Ponto, had died when he resisted being kidnapped by a RAF commando which included his own god-daughter. This had been intended to be the first of a two-pronged action to put pressure on the West German bourgeoisie to force the state to free the prisoners.

Despite their failure to take Ponto alive, the RAF decided to follow through on the second part of this plan, and so, on September 5, the “Siegfried Hausner Commando” of the RAF kidnapped Hanns-Martin Schleyer. His car and police escort were forced to stop by a baby stroller that was left out in the middle of the road, at which point they were ambushed by guerillas who killed his driver and three police officers before making their getaway.

Scene of devastation after Hans Martin Schleyer was seized,
his driver and police escort killed

Schleyer was the most powerful businessman in West Germany at the time. He was the president of both the Federal Association of German Industrialists and the Federal Association of German Employers. As a former Nazi SS officer, he was also a symbol of the continuity between the Third Reich and the post-war power structure.

As the guerilla would later explain:

We hoped to confront the SPD (1) with the decision of whether to exchange these two individuals who embody the global power of FRG (2) capital in a way that few others do.

Ponto for his international financial policy (revealing how all the German banks, especially his own Dresdner Bank, work to support reactionary regimes in developing countries and also the role of FRG financial policy as a tool to control European integration) and Schleyer for the national economic policy (the big trusts, corporatism, the FRG as an international model of social peace).

They embodied the power within the state which the SPD must respect if it wishes to stay in power.(3)

Despite the failure of the Ponto action, it had been felt that the plan could not be called off, that lives were at stake: “the prisoners had reached a point where we could no longer put off an action to liberate them. The prisoners were on a thirst strike and Gudrun was dying.”(4)

Within a day of Schleyer’s kidnapping, the commando demanded the release of eleven prisoners – including the RAF founders Gudrun Ensslin, Jan-Carle Raspe and Andreas Baader – and their transportation to a country of their choice.

Despite the fact that the prisoners offered assurances that they would not return to West Germany or participate in future armed actions if exiled, on September 6 the state released a statement indicating that they would not release the prisoners under any circumstances.

On the same day, a total communication ban was instituted against all political prisoners. The so-called Kontaktsperre law, which had been rushed through parliament in a matter of days specifically to deal with this situation, deprived the prisoners of all contact with each other as well as with the outside world. All visits, including those of lawyers and family members, were forbidden. The prisoners were also denied all access to mail, newspapers, magazines, television and radio.

In short, those subjected to this law were placed in 100% individual isolation.

On September 9, Agence France Presse’s Bonn office received the first ultimatum from the commando holding Schleyer, setting a 1:00pm deadline for the release of the prisoners. The state countered with a proposal that Denis Payot, a well-known human rights lawyer based in Geneva, act as a negotiator. Secret negotiations began the same day.

On September 22, RAF member Knut Folkerts was arrested in Utrecht after a shoot-out which left one Dutch policeman dead and two more injured. He would eventually be convicted of Buback’s murder (5) . A woman, identified as RAF member Brigitte Mohnhapt, managed to get away. The search for Schleyer was extended to Holland, but to no avail.

On September 30, defense attorney Ardnt Müller was arrested. Accused of having worked with his colleagues Armin Newerla and Klaus Croissant to recruit for the RAF, he was imprisoned under Kontaktsperre conditions. The arrest was buttressed by the claim that on September 2 Müller had used Newerla’s car, in which an incriminating map had allegedly been found. The next day Croissant, who had fled to France earlier that year, would be arrested in Paris.

On October 7, the thirty-second day of the kidnapping, newspapers in France and Germany received a letter from Schleyer, accompanied by a photo, decrying the “indecisiveness” of the authorities.

Hans Martin Schleyer in captivity

On October 13, with negotiations deadlocked, a Palestinian commando intervened in solidarity with the RAF, putting the already intense confrontation on an entirely different level.

The four-person Commando Martyr Halimeh, led by Zohair Youssef Akache of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, hijacked a Lufthansa airliner traveling from Majorca, Spain to Frankfurt in West Germany – ninety people on board were taken hostage.

The airliner was first diverted to Rome to refuel and to issue the commando’s demands. These were the release of the eleven RAF prisoners and two Palestinians being held in Turkey, Mahdi Muhammed and Hussein Muhammed al Rashid, who were serving life terms for a shootout at Istanbul airport in 1976 in which four people were killed.

The plane flew to Cyprus and from there to the Gulf where it landed first in Bahrain and then in Dubai.

It was now the morning of October 14. Denis Payot announced receipt of a communiqué setting a deadline of 8:00am on October 16 for all the demands to be met “if a bloodbath was to be avoided.” The communiqué, signed by both the Commando Martyr Halimeh and the Siegfried Hausner Commando, was accompanied by a videotape of Schleyer.

Later that day the West German government released a statement specifying that they intended to do everything possible to find “a reasonable and humanitarian solution” so as to save the lives of the hostages. That evening the Minister in Charge of Special Affairs, Hans Jürgen Wischnewski, left Bonn for Dubai.

On October 15, Payot announced that he had an “extremely important and urgent” message for the Siegfried Hausner Commando from the federal government in Bonn. Wischnewski, on the site in Dubai, promised that there would be no military intervention. That evening the West German media broke its self-imposed silence (which had been requested by the state) for the first time since the kidnapping, showing a thirty-second clip from the Schleyer video received the day before.

As another day drew to an end, the West German government announced that Somalia, South Yemen and Vietnam had all refused to accept the RAF prisoners or the two Palestinians held in Turkey.

At eight o’clock in the morning on October 16, the forty-first day since the kidnapping of Schleyer, the deadline established in the October 14 ultimatum passed. In Geneva, Payot once again announced that he had received an “extremely important and urgent” message from Bonn. At 10:43am, the Turkish Minister of Finance and Defense declared that the Turkish government was prepared to release the two Palestinians should the West German government request it.

At 11:21am, the hijacked airliner left Dubai.

At noon, a second ultimatum passed.

At 3:20am on October 17, the hijacked airliner landed in Mogadishu, Somalia. The dead body of Flight Captain Jürgen Schumann, who had apparently sent out coded messages about the situation on board, was pushed out the door.

As the sun was rising the hijackers extended their deadline once again, to 2:00pm.

At 2:00pm yet another deadline past. Minutes earlier a plane carrying Wischnewski and the GSG-9, a West German anti-terrorist commando, had landed in Mogidishu.

At the same time in Germany Schleyer’s family released a statement announcing their willingness to negotiate with the kidnappers.

That night, as the double-standoff continued, the government issued a statement that the “terrorists” had no option but to surrender. Less than an hour later, the West German government requested an international news blackout of developments at the airport in Mogidishu.

Souhaila Andrawes gives the victory sign as she is taken away on a stretcher:
the three other members of the commando had been killed

At 11:00pm on October 17, sixty members of the GSG-9 attacked the airliner; guerilla fighters Zohair Youssef Akache, Hind Alameh and Nabil Harb were killed, and Souhaila Andrawes was gravely wounded. All hostages were rescued unharmed, with the exception of one man who suffered a heart attack.

The next morning, at 7am on October 18, a government spokesperson publicly announced the resolution of the hijacking.

An hour later, another spokesperson announced the “suicides” of Gudrun Ensslin and Andreas Baader and the “attempted suicides” of Jan-Carl Raspe and Irmgard Möller. Raspe subsequently died of his wounds. (As we will see tomorrow, there is an abundance of evidence indicating that the prisoners were murdered.)

Andreas Baader shot through the head and
Gudrun Ensslin hanging in her cell:
the State claimed they committed suicide...

On October 19, police discovered Schleyer’s body in the trunk of a car in the French border town of Mulhouse.

After forty-three days, the most intense clash between the anti-imperialist guerillas and the West German state had come to its bloody conclusion, sending shock waves through every sector of West German society.

The German Autumn effected the entire West German left, as the State responded to the 77 offensive with a wave of repression against the entire revolutionary movement.

On April 25, just a few weeks after the RAF had killed Siegfried Buback, a student newspaper had published an essay entitled Buback Obituary, in which the anonymous author admitted his “secret joy” at the Federal Prosecutor’s assassination. While the Buback Obituary was obviously hostile to the RAF’s politics, the State seized upon the opportunity to clamp down on the radical left and sympathetic academics.

At the same time, the plethora of Maoist parties and pre-party formations (the so-called “K-Groups”) had also entered the State’s sights. After Schleyer was seized, the State moved to ban the three largest Maoist parties, the KBW, the KPD and the KPD/ML, with ludicrous claims that they had some connection to “terrorism”. All three organizations called for a joint demonstration in Bonn on October 8, 1977, under the slogan “Marxism-Leninism Cannot Be Outlawed!” Twenty thousand people marched under red flags in what would be the only joint activity these sectarian organizations would mount during the decade.

While most of these Maoist K-groups would implode within a few years, losing many members to the new Green Party, some other militants managed break through the impasse of 77 in their own way, by organizing a radical left countercultural happening, Tunix (6) , held in January 1978 in West Berlin. As the organizers (“Quinn the Eskimo”, “Frankie Lee” and “Judas Priest”) explained in their call out, “When our identity is under attack, like during the situation in the fall of ‘77, then we need to take the initiative and state openly what it is we want. Political taboos and appeals to the constitution won't save us.”

The Tunix conference represented a breakthrough for the anti-authoritarian “sponti” scene, with as many as twenty thousand people attending. Participants took to the streets, and the first violent demonstration in a long time was held in Berlin as people threw bricks and paint filled eggs at the courthouse, the America House and the women’s prison. Banners read “Free the prisoners!”, “Out With the Filth” and “Stammheim is Everywhere.”

Nevertheless, this was a time of defeat and demoralization. As a later writer would note:

While some people sought to criticize the state's violence (for example, 177 professors issued a statement), most people were simply left speechless by the events… whole streets were lined with cops with machineguns, known left-wing radicals were stopped and searched, and radical left meeting places were raided.

The ‘German Autumn’ forced the undogmatic radical left scene to re-orient itself away from factory struggles and squatting efforts and towards the growing anti-nuclear actions... In the context of the anti-imperialist attacks and hijackings by the RAF (and some barely identifiable Arab forces) during the ‘77-Offensive, the process of the splitting off of the radical left scene, which began in 1972, was complete. Increased state repression, coupled with denunciations and distancing by left-liberals and academics from the '68-generation, made the whole affair a traumatic experience for the radical left.

During this phase of isolation and disorientation, many comrades lapsed into resignation or joined up with the alternative movement. Another wing ‘hibernated’ in the anti-nuclear movement for a while.(7)

As the RAF would later acknowledge: “We committed errors in 77 and the offensive was turned into our most serious setback.”(8)

It would take some time for the guerrilla to formulate the lessons to be drawn from this unprecedented setback, to regroup and to plan its next moves.

Thousands gather at the funeral of Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe

You can read the RAF's communiques regarding this actions here:

• Second Communiqué Regarding the Schleyer Kidnapping from the Siegfried Hausner Commando (September 6th, 1977)


• Operation Kofr Kaddum from SAWIO Commando (October 13th 1977)


• Ultimatum from SAWIO Commando (October 13th 1977)


• Final Communique Regarding Schleyer from the Siegfried Hausner Commando (October 13th 1977)
  
  

***************************

Thirty years ago an escalating conflict between the Red Army Faction and the West German state reached its turning point. As events reached their climax in a bloody series of events known as “The German Autumn” every sector of West German society was shaken to the core.

Kersplebedeb will be co-publishing a two volume complete works and history of the Red Army Faction in early 2008. This week, to mark the events of thirty years ago, we will be posting a series of pieces drawn from these books.

More information about the Red Army Faction is available at http://www.germanguerilla.com

For more information about the upcoming two volume history and complete works of the RAF, contact info@kersplebedeb.com

Tomorrow's installment: The Stammheim "Suicides"

***************************

Footnotes

(1) The Social Democratic Party of Germany, then the ruling party.

(2) Federal Republic of Germany, West Germany’s official name

(3) The Resistance, The Guerilla and the Anti-Imperialist Front, May 1982

(4) Ibid.

(5) Earlier this year former RAF members Peter-Jürgen Boock and Silke Maier-Witt stepped forward to claim that Folkerts could not possibly have been the shooter as he had been in Amsterdam that day. The two went on to point the finger at another RAF member, Stefan Wisniewski, as the shooter, naming Günter Sonnenberg as the driver of the motorcycle from which the fatal shots were fired. Furthermore, Maier-Witt claims to have informed the police in 1990 that Folkerts was in Amsterdam on the day of the shooting. It is also alleged that former RAF member Verena Becker informed the police that Wisniewski was the shooter as early as 1982. These developments have forced to German police to reopen the Buback case, and it is not outside of the realm of reason that former RAF members already released might find themselves facing a new trial when the renewed investigation is completed.

(6) A play on words which means “do nothing.”

(7) Fire and Flames: A History of the German Autonomist Movement by Geronimo, unpublished translation by Arm The Spirit. (available in German for free download here)

(8) The Guerilla, the Resistance and the Anti-Imperialist Front op cit.

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PFLP response to Bush (17 July 2007)

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Press Release issued by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

• The address of US President George Bush and his call for an international conference on the Middle East are a deception.
• The United States of America and the Bush Administration are not an honest broker, but stand completely on the side of the policy of Zionist aggression and terror.

Commenting on the address by the US President George Bush and his call for the convening of an international conference on the Middle East, Dr. Mahir at-Tahir, Member of the Political Bureau of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and representative of its leadership outside Palestine, declared:

The call of the American president to hold an international conference on the Middle East and his talk about a Palestinian state lack all credibility and constitute a form of trickery and deception, particularly following the writ of guarantees that he has given to Israel in which he pledges his commitment to their positions of not withdrawing from Jerusalem, of keeping the large blocs of settlements on the Palestinian West Bank, and of rejecting the right of return of the Palestinian refugees.

The American Administration stands entirely on the side of the policy of aggression and terror practiced by Israel and therefore these declarations of the American President amount to an attempt to deepen the divisions and internal struggles in the Palestinian arena.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine declares that the wretched path of constantly betting on pointless negotiations with Israel and this meeting of the Palestinian President with Olmert in Jerusalem have produced nothing serious for the good of the Palestinian cause.

Israel, supported by the United States of America, does not want peace; it is aiming at imposing surrender and dictates on the Palestinian people and is trying to stop the legitimate resistance against the occupation.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine calls on all the patriotic and Islamic forces in the Palestinian arena to tighten their ranks, build Palestinian national unity, stop the bloody internal conflicts, and direct all their energies towards confronting the Zionist occupation squatting on the land of Palestine. The PFLP calls for a comprehensive Palestinian national dialogue in order to set the Palestinian house in order on the basis of adherence to Palestinian national principles and continuing the resistance in all its forms against the occupation.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Press Office.
17 July 2007.

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Three July 5th Communiques from the PFLP

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Military Communiqué

Issued by the Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades
The Military wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Armed clash with a special Zionist force to the east of the al-Burayj Refugee Camp.

The Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades is at this time fighting an armed battle with enemy forces that have penetrated to the east of the al-Burayj refugee camp in the middle of the Ghazza District, today 5 July 2007 at precisely 10:30 a.m.

This operation is our confirmation that we will continue on the path of resistance and defiance in the face of all enemy attempts, repulsing with all means their crimes against our people. It demonstrates our complete readiness to block all the enemy’s attempts at shaking our steadfastness, our will, and our unity.

The Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades will continue to maintain vigilance in the face of the Zionist enemy.

Glory to the virtuous martyrs and healing to the wounded heroes!

Freedom to our courageous prisoners and victory to the resistance!

We will surely win!

The Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades.

Thursday, 5 July 2007.

Military Communiqué

Issued by the Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades The Military wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Armed clash with a special Zionist unit to the east of Bayt Hanoun.

The Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades declare their responsibility for an armed clash with a special Zionist force that they observed at the end of al-Banat Street in eastern Bayt Hanoun in the north of Ghazza Province. During the battle a group of al-Qassam Brigade fighters arrived to provide support for the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigade fighters that was waging the battle. They attacked the force with a rocket-propelled grenade today, Thursday, 5 July 2007 at precisely 2:35 p.m.

This operation is our confirmation that we will continue along the path of resistance, blocking every enemy attempt to advance, and that we are ready to teach the enemy a harsh lesson so that he will think long and hard before deciding to invade our territory.

We also affirm the need for unity and national solidarity in the face of an enemy that knows nothing of mercy or humanism, as he has always been.

Glory to the virtuous martyrs and healing to the wounded heroes!

Freedom to our courageous prisoners and victory to the resistance!

We will surely win!

The Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades.

Thursday, 5 July 2007.

Military Communiqué

Issued by the Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades And the Popular Resistance Committees.


Shelling the Erez Crossing area with two Sumoud Rockets.

The Marty Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades and the Popular Resistance Committees declare their responsibility for shelling the Erez Crossing area with two Sumoud rockets today, Thursday, 5 July 2007 at precisely 3:37 in the afternoon.

This operation confirms our determination to continue on the path or resistance and of delivering a quick response to the actions of the enemy such as the penetration into our territory, attacks on our resistance and our people.

We also affirm the need for the unity of all national efforts and for intensifying the resistance, directing our guns at the enemy, for this is their proper aim.

Glory to the virtuous martyrs and healing to the wounded heroes!

Freedom to our courageous prisoners and victory to the resistance!

We will surely win!

The Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades. Popular
Resistance Committees

Thursday, 5 July 2007.

Arabic source: http://www.kataebabuali.com/

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PFLP on the 40th Anniversary of the Naksah (Six Day War)

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Source: http://www.pflp.ps/index.php?action=Details&id=1031

On the 40th anniversary of the ‘Naksah’ defeat, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine calls for the renewal of the effort of national resistance.

On the 40th anniversary of the 1967 defeat known as the “naksah,” the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine called for the renewal of the Palestinian national resistance effort, an effort that was born and grew up as a reaction to the defeat of the Arab regimes, and as a militant choice of the Palestinian people and the peoples of the Arab Nation in confrontation with settler colonialism and conquest, occupation, aggression, hegemony, and dependence.

The PFLP stated that the path of resistance is the only path guaranteed and tested and able to recover rights and honor and to safeguard identity – a fact that has been proven by the historic resistance of the Arab masses, and is being proven today by the resistance of the Iraqi masses in the Land of the Two Rivers, in addition to the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance that have established, in spite of all the difficult regional and international conditions, the ability of the Arab fighter and soldier to defeat the occupation army and “undefeatable” Zionist terror. Resistance has shattered the Zionists’ traditional strength and deterrent power and undermined their faith in the Zionist leadership, its army, and security agencies. At the same time it has exposed the reality of the war efforts of the Arab regimes, which, despite the triumphs of the Arab soldier, left 99 percent of the cards in the hands of America after having freed the Arab homeland of foreign control and external factors of manipulation and pressure.

The PFLP believes that the degeneration and decline from the slogans proclaimed at the Khartoum Summit after the 1967 defeat – “No peace accord, no recognition, no negotiations!” – to the total reversal of that position as expressed by the Riyadh Summit in March 2007 is proof of how far the official Arab level has declined, and of how far it is willing to go to deny the resistance and to try to circumvent it and undermine it, pursuing instead the policy of compliance, servility, and dependency on the colonial powers and American globalism.

The PFLP regards it as supremely ironic that 40 years of Zionist American arrogance and Arab degradation are still not enough to convince the official Arab regimes of the efficacy of the course of resistance, when in fact resistance is the only real strategic peace option.

Today we see the Zionist state of occupation and terror after 40 years of occupation of the West Bank and Gaza territories and 14 years after the Oslo Declarations is still establishing settlements and deploying settlers all over the lands of Jerusalem and the West Bank. There are now nearly half a million settlers there who have gobbled up nearly half of the land of the West Bank, including Jerusalem, and who squander more than 80 percent of its water resources.

At the same time the Zionist state perpetrates the most atrocious violations, acts of piracy, abductions, war crimes, and blockades against the land and people with impunity and with absolute support from its strategic ally in Washington that controls the resources and markets of the Arabs, plants military bases on their soil, fills their waters with its naval fleets, carrying out open aggression while imposing its humiliating and repressive rule upon them.

The PFLP noted that in the 40 years that have passed, the Palestinian people have made legendary sacrifices, waged an armed revolution and successive intifadas, and carried on a continuous resistance, thereby reasserting their political identity and raising their national cause from an issue of refugees to the cause of a people struggling, under the banners of its militant vanguard and sole legal representative the Palestine Liberation Organization, for freedom, independence, the return, and self-determination, the same as the rest of the peoples of the Earth.

Today, after 40 years in the maws of a battle for national liberation and democracy, we see the struggle flaring up again between the course of steadfastness and resistance on the one hand and the course of Palestinian and Arab alienation and a vain chase after the mirage of empty American promises and peace plans on the other. Our people are threatened with the danger that their national cause will be eliminated by the replacement of the goal of establishing an independent Palestinian state with the aim of a self-rule regime for the inhabitants, set up within temporary limits under the guard and at the mercy of the security of Israel and its economy, abandoning the right of return and relegating our people abroad to the fate of exclusion or dissolution and denationalization in other countries as we spin in an orbit around a phantom solution, engaged in impotent bilateral negotiations under American-Israel supervision. The home front is under attack in various ways and through numerous means of interference from abroad, when it should be uniting and strengthening its national ranks, embarking on the course of democracy and pluralistic participatory national politics which would in word and deed lay down the clear political basis on which national, popular, official, regional, and international forces could rally around the goals of the Palestinian people and their just, legitimate struggle.

On this occasion the PFLP warns that any call for a critical review of our situation loses its real value if it is not linked with national self criticism and critique of the course traversed by the revolution and all the organizations and social forces of the PLO, and a critique of the outcome of the negotiations that have been held and of the Oslo Agreements – the Palestinian people’s verdict on which has already been pronounced by the daily reality of intifada and at the election polls as well.

At this critical time, in which a national disaster and great calamity are threatening, the Popular Front appealed to the Fateh and Hamas movements to finally put an absolute end to solving differences within the national ranks by anything other than dialogue and democratic means, using reason and supreme national interests as their methodology, carrying on a comprehensive national dialogue among all the political and social forces on the basis of the Prisoners’ Document – the “National Accord” – that laid the firm programmatic foundation for reasserting the spirit of resistance, security, and stability, comprehensive democratic reform, national unity, and the activation and reconstruction of the PLO and its popular bases – from the bottom to the top – on democratic foundations through elections in accordance with the principle of total proportional representation in the framework of a clear time table, inasmuch as the PLO is the leader, authority, and sole legal representative of the Palestinian people wherever they are to be found.

Posted at 10:05 a.m. Palestine time, on 4 June 2007.

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Two PFLP Statements on the Execution of Saddam Hussein

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The following from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, on the execution of Saddam Hussein by the Iraqi police state. I don’t agree with the PFLP’s feelings about Hussein, but for those who are interested, this is what they have to say, in two separate statements:

The Popular Front regards the assassination of Saddam, the symbol and epitome of Arab rejection and resistance, as a vile plot by the evil chief Bush.

In a press statement issued by an official spokesman, the Popular Front declared that it regards the act of assassinating the leader Saddam Husayn, the symbol and epitome of Arab rejection and resistance, as the completion of a vile plot hatched by Bush, the evil chief, his fascist administration, and his stooges in the region.

The official spokesman stressed that this assassination comes in the context of the plot aimed
at destroying the Arab renewal project in Iraq, whereby the Bush Administration sought to put an end to this stage of development, progress, resistance, and rejection of American imperialism.

The official representative said that the assassination, which is in violation of all
international laws and norms but reflects the fake democracy that the United States of America advocates, was carried out by political order of the American Administration, which he said, violates international laws and human rights.

The spokesman emphasized that the criminal assassination constitutes an insult to the Arabs and Muslims in the world, inasmuch as it sends a message to Arab leaders that they must remain under the control and in the grip of the Americans.  The fact that this crime was committed on the festival of ‘Id al-Adha is a brazen provocation and an open act of scorn.

The Popular Front praised the leader Saddam Husayn, stressing that he would be remembered forever as the Arab leader who stood up in the face of American imperialism.

The Popular Front appealed to the Arab peoples to move and go out in mass marches in condemnation of the vicious crime against the authentic Arab leader who was always on the side of the oppressed peoples, first of all the Palestinian people.

At the conclusion of his statement, the spokesman saluted the heroic Iraqi resistance front calling on it to intensify its operations against the American occupation.  He called on the Iraqi people to unite and stand steadfast so as to attain independence.

Arabic original:
http://www.pflp.ps/index.php?action=Details&id;=508

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Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Press Release.

A spokesman for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine made a statement denouncing the criminal assassination of the Iraqi President Saddam Husayn. The spokesman said: This crime that the American-British forces have committed is aimed at stirring up increased divisions and struggles within Iraq in order to destroy and partition the country and control its resources.

The trial that was held under the aegis of the American occupation of Iraq was devoid of all legality and was in violation of the principles of international law.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine calls on the Iraqi people of all backgrounds and orientations to tighten their ranks in confrontation with the invaders and liberate the country in order to preserve the unity of Iraqi territory and frustrate the American-Zionist plans that aim at igniting and fanning the fires of sectarian and religious strife in Iraq and then spreading them throughout the region in order to impose the so-called “New Middle East” that means the fragmentation of the region and control over its resources and wealth.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine extends its greetings to the fraternal Iraqi people and its heroic resistance that is standing up to the occupation and has forced the American scheme into a bottleneck from which the administration of Bush the criminal is now seeking a way out.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine calls on all honorable people in the world to stand beside the people of Iraq and their resistance and just struggle to expel the occupation, liberate the country, and build a free, united, democratic, Arab Iraq.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
The State of Palestine.
30 December 2006.

Arabic original at:
http://www.pflp.ps

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